WASHINGTON — Congress should
maintain a ban on the importation of chicken from China, House Agriculture
Appropriations Subcommittee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., said July 28.

DeLauro also said the Agriculture
Department should consider revising its system for declaring meat and poultry
food safety systems of other governments “equivalent” to the U.S. system and
foreign products eligible for importation.

“I’ll collect ideas on how to deal
with Chinese chicken in the short term and equivalency in the long term,”
DeLauro told reporters after a hearing at which critics and defenders of the
equivalency system testified.

Banned chicken

The House-passed fiscal year 2010
ag appropriations bills contains a continuation of a ban that has been in
effect since 2007 when DeLauro became concerned about the safety of the
Chinese chicken that the Bush administration proposed to import.

The Senate Appropriations
Committee-passed version of the fiscal year 2010 ag appropriations bill
contains a measure that would allow the chicken imports if USDA’s Food Safety
and Inspection Service and China meet certain requirements, but DeLauro said
the House provision should prevail because the Senate provision would allow
the importation to go into effect under an equivalency system that she now
considers flawed.

DeLauro presented a 2004 USDA
inspection report of Chinese chicken slaughter and processing plants that
showed grease, blood, fat and foreign particles in one plant and so many food
safety deficiencies in another plant that the inspector wrote that if the
establishment ever were certified to export to the United States, “it would
be immediately delisted.”

DeLauro said USDA had proceeded
with a rule to allow the importation of Chinese chicken, even though the
inspection reports were negative, because the Bush administration wanted to
convince the Chinese to restore the importation of U.S. beef, which it had
stopped after the discovery of mad cow disease in the United States in 2003.
China has not restored U.S. beef imports.

Agriculture Undersecretary for
Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services Jim Miller recently said the chicken
ban is making all agriculture negotiations with the Chinese difficult.
DeLauro has said repeatedly that trade issues should not trump food safety.

Food safety before trade

DeLauro said she did not ask USDA
to testify because President Obama has not nominated an undersecretary for
food safety, but that after that person is confirmed, there will be another
hearing.

“We are waiting very patiently.
And then do I have questions for that person,” DeLauro said.

Richard Raymond, who served as
agriculture undersecretary for food safety during the Bush administration
from 2005 to 2008 when the administration put forward the Chinese chicken
rule, was present at the hearing, but DeLauro rejected the suggestion by
House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Jack Kingston,
R-Ga., that Raymond testify.

After the hearing, Raymond told
reporters that the rulemaking process at USDA for a rule on importing U.S.
and Canadian chicken processed in China been proper, but acknowledged that it
had gone through the Office of Management and Budget very quickly. He added
that the real issue is the importation of processed Chinese-grown chicken,
which USDA was considering when Congress stopped the rulemaking process.

Kevin Brosch, a former USDA
attorney and trade negotiator, who now represents a coalition of 39 pro-trade
agriculture groups including chicken, turkey, beef and pork producers, said
Congress should leave the Chinese chicken issue up to USDA because the
current ban on USDA conducting a risk assessment on Chinese poultry violates
World Trade Organization rules. But he said his coalition is not lobbying for
how USDA would decide whether the Chinese food safety system is equivalent to
the U.S. system.

Lori Wallach, director of Public
Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, and Wenonah Hunter, executive director of Food
& Water Watch, testified that USDA’s equivalency rule is too lenient and
that USDA should rewrite it. Wallach and Hunter also noted that Japan and the
European Union do import Chinese chicken, but said they have much stricter
rules and their own inspectors in China to make sure cleanliness standards
are imposed.